“Can we buy our way to a better world?”, Brian Tokar asks. It may be gratifying to assist people in a distant, impoverished community, but their future may be tragically limited if we do not fundamentally reshape our own way of life and our society.

The late 1960s saw an upsurge of popular democracy amid violent conflicts and anti-war protests. Milton Kotler brought to light a movement for local control across America, and believed that community self-rule could provide a democratic alternative to national representative government.

The debate between social ecology and deep ecology broke out in the summer of 1987, and created a lasting split in the ecology movement in the US and elsewhere. Why are the ideas of social ecology and deep ecology incommensurable? What are the basic areas of disagreement?

The traditional Left triumphed human self-consciousness and fought hard to remove clerical powers, archaic traditions, and irrationality from social affairs. This seem forgotten by the Left of today. To maintain a socially progressive stance, however, the Left must retain some basic values of the enlightenment.

How can we face the urban future? How can we remake our cities? How can we recreate a balance between town and country? In this brief comment, Janet Biehl presents the vision of a participatory, urban future where people, as active citizens can manage themselves through face-to-face democracy.

Global warming has made many environmentalists believe that democracy is too slow and complicated to solve the climate crisis. Some argue that what we need is wartime mobilization and a strong global leadership with excessive powers. This belief is deeply flawed and dangerous.